2.1.2-Treblemirinlens
Brick!Club 2.1.2 Hougomont It might in part be the Virginian in me, but this chapter really makes me want to visit Hougomont and the Waterloo battlefield for myself. Pictures and maps and such are great, but there’s nothing like seeing the site and being able to walk around it. Plus it would be interesting to see what has changed since Hugo wrote these chapters of his own journey. On a related note before I delve into the chapter, does anyone have any resources they’d recommend on the battle? I’ve been poking at Wikipedia and Google a bit, but recommendations would be most appreciated! More vivid imagery in this chapter, but decidedly darker. “The storm of the combat is still in this court: the horror is visible there; the overturn of the conflict is there petrified, it lives; it dies; it was but yesterday.” I wonder how much of the battle scars were left there because the residents couldn’t afford to clean up all at once and how much was untouched as a sort of tourist attraction. The description of the remains of the stairs is perhaps my favorite in this chapter. I’ve a certain curiosity for old, abandoned, and/or neglected places, and this paragraph really hits that. I can picture it clearly in my head while also pondering it. Is there some significance to the trident cut into the first of the remaining steps? Are the trees still there? Probably not the dead one, but the one growing across the staircase? If it is then surely it’s overtaken the staircase by this time. “A miracle, say the country people. The infant Jesus, decapitated, was not so fortunate as the Christ.” I find it a bit bizarre that the locals would call it a miracle that the Christ statue survived with only the feet burned and the baby statue decapitated. I would find it a miracle if both had survived completely untouched, but perhaps I’m missing something symbolic here? And then the REALLY eerie part. “It appears that on the night after the burial, feeble voices were heard calling out from the well.” THANK YOU for that Hugo. Though I suppose I should thank Hugo for not delving into that any further than he did. The entire section about the well and that ending bit in particular makes me shudder. Oh, but look: it is followed by another symbolic life-after-horrific-events bird! And then we have the battle scarred and overgrown orchard. I wish I could come up with more to say on this, but I’ll look forward to seeing what others have on it. I do particularly like the way the trees are described: uprooted, diseased, falling, skeletons. They are both echos of what the orchard once was as well as the battle that occurred. What a way to close the chapter: the wording suggests that the loss of life occurred in order for locals to charge travelers for a recount of the battle, but it is also a super-convenient transition into Hugo’s recount of the battle.